WASHINGTON — Although the Bush administration moved cautiously Monday to intervene in the West Coast ports shutdown, few observers doubt that the president will act quickly to end the lockout if the two sides can't settle their differences within days.
Most administration attention now focuses on the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which gives the president the power to call for an 80-day cooling-off period. Observers say if Bush ultimately invokes the act and ends the shutdown, he is likely to reap political as well as economic benefits.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine an issue better framed for a Republican president to tackle than another economic crisis spilling out of Democratic California and, this time, arguably triggered by a keystone of the Democratic coalition: organized labor.
Although members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are being locked out by management, the shipping companies and terminal operators say they had no choice but to shut down the ports after what they characterized as an orchestrated slowdown by workers.
"I do think if the president invokes the Taft-Hartley law, it could be very helpful," said Stephen Kinney, a Los Angeles-based partner of the GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. "To take some kind of action instead of sitting on the sidelines would be fitting with his character and show his decisiveness."
Most of Bush's encounters with organized labor since coming to office 20 months ago have been combative. In March 2001, for instance, he issued an executive order preventing a strike by mechanics at Northwest Airlines. He went on to help push pilots and flight attendants into settlements with Delta and American airlines.
Within months of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, he cited national security concerns to abruptly end union representation at several Justice Department agencies.
More recently, he has become embroiled in a political slugfest over whether employees of his proposed Homeland Security Department can be safely granted civil service job protection.
But none of these fights provided the clear political sightlines that the battle over the Pacific ports appears to offer. Finally, the administration seems to believe, Bush can be seen as standing up to union intransigence and doing so in the name of protecting the economy and the nation's security.
"I think the White House sees this as ... an opportunity for Bush to look Reaganesque," said University of Texas economist James K. Galbraith.
